Author: Bristol Gay Students

BRISTOL: The student newspaper of the Bristol Art students, which has a circulation of about 15,000 copies, published an article headed ‘Gay News’ on January 25th. The article dealt with a description of what it is like to be a gay person today; it opened with a description of a typical gay club and then went on to describe organisations such as GLF and CHE and gay publications such as Gay News, Lunch, Come Together and Gin.

Distributed among the article’s 2000 words were photographs of a Gay Liberation demonstration in Trafalgar Square, a picture of two men kissing and a cartoon. The article also included a section on the relationship between student unions and the gay rights movement which involves the possibility of getting a gay rights motion passed by the National Union of Students at its next conference in April. The article was the first to be published by the area paper although individual college papers had run articles about gay lib before they were replaced by the area paper last year.

Motion Passed

The General Meeting of the University of Bristol Union passed a motion dealing with homosexuals on January 17th. The motion, which was passed without opposition, called for trade union support for homosexuals who suspected that they had been dismissed for being gay. The motion also instructed the union’s executive to produce a report on homosexuals and to send a motion to the NUS for their next conference. In proposing the motion, Trevor Locke, who is a member of the union’s executive, said that the student movement in this country could do a great deal of good in supporting gay rights and trying to attack social and legal discrimination against homosexuals. Similar motions have been passed at other universities so that there is a growing body of support for gay people in the universities of this country.

Bristol Assists Exeter

A speaker from Bristol University Gay Soc addressed a meeting of 200 students at Exeter University on January 19, which was the first time that homosexuality had been discussed publicly there. Some students asked questions or made comments, and one student declared to the audience that he was gay and outlined the feeling of isolation he had as a gay person living on a heterosexual campus. There is no gay group either in Exeter city or in the University, but Bristol will help the formation of a group there.